Fair Use Under Attack Again By The AP -- Or A Greedy Basterd's Lawyers Are Never Unemployed

So the Associated Press is at is again. Perhaps you may remember that last year, the AP wanted to start charging people for quotes of any length from their articles.

Apparently, not content to erode away at the Fair Use doctrine that way, the AP has announced that they will now be adding software to their online offerings to see how they are used. The monitoring software will not only, apparently, be watching to see how the contents and title of the story will be used, but also the link to the articles themselves. The AP is claiming that in order to link to the article, a licensing agreement is required.

Now this is not just going to affect use by bloggers. They are taking the position that search engines will be required to agree to a licensing agreement as well.

Isn't that nice.

I hate IP law as it has been perverted. This idea that any use, even minimal (forget "fair use"), requires them to get paid is wrong. It erodes at the public domain more than was ever intended.

How nice for this organization to do this, especially given how they started out.